Florida has unraveled climate goals for years. DeSantis struck the latest blow. - E&E News by POLITICO
Florida has unraveled climate goals for years. DeSantis struck the latest blow. - E&E News by POLITICO
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday toured flood-ravaged areas of South Florida — and defended his recent move to scrap the state’s climate change goals.
DeSantis toured flooded areas of Hollywood, where he declared a state of emergency Wednesday after parts of the region received more than 20 inches of rain this week. There, he brushed off recent criticism from Democrats for signing a bill last month that struck language directing the state to promote renewable energy and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“Our energy bill that we did, it wasn’t about saying or not saying ‘climate change,’” DeSantis said Friday. “It was a substantive piece of legislation to say that in the state of Florida our energy policy is going to be driven by affordability for Floridians and reliability.”
After a storm, “We need to get the lights back on,” he continued. “We don’t want our policy driven by climate ideology.”
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.